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MYSTIC DREAMSCAPES-
THE ART OF BASIL ALKAZZI
by GEORGE S. WHITTET

"And then when the moon rose there was a silence, and in that
quietude I seemed to say a prayer, a wish, a hope, a dream, and
as I looked up, and faced the brightness that shone upon me,
within that moment, a fire-fly brushed its delicate wings across
my brow, as if to soothe, to caress, to anoint, to bless me..." [1]

Basil Alkazzi is a rarity on the contemporary scene, a painter 
whose imagery induces reactions beyond the fashionable trends of
clotted impasto and minimal content. Though socially selective
and reserved, he has travelled most of his life not unlike in
manner of his nomadic forebears.

In the Spring of 1976 he held his first one-man exhibition at the
Drian Galleries in London presenting a collection in oils and
coloured ink drawings that registered a highly convincing 
identity. Interiors and landscapes embodied a formal structure
and intricate patterns. Pervasive colour moods set the key to
the geometric repeats and reversals of the motifs. Works 
composed on grounds of vibrant blues and greens tracked their
perspectives to infinity through arches of serene proportions,
often to a central blue nave, its orbs suspended in cerulean
space.  Irrevocably committed to his art as an integral function
in existing, Basil Alkazzi keeps a record of his thoughts and
ideas; some of these epigrammatic notes I quote here. Besides
tracing the direction of philosophical speculations, his written
words often suggest titles for the paintings. Though they rarely
precisely caption the pictures' imagery, none the less they
reflect his awareness of life's mystic presences. Sensitive on
the one hand to the occurrences of natural phenomena- dawns,
storms, calm tides, rainbows– he seems to sense imminent
happenings predestined in a distant past, evident in titles such
as Transmutations in Time, A Dream Moment Awaiting the Moment,
and Another Moment, Another Time, Another Season.

During the 1970s a covert element of mysticism invested the
paintings, strongly evident in the 1977 exhibition. An extract
from his dairy in 1976 reads:
"To be born, as one is born, in the middle of the ocean, on the
crest of waves, in the womb of the night, after midnight, to
drift on, kissed by moonlight, towards a shore, a distant unknown
port; to drift on, waiting for the dawn, to then be kissed by the
sun; and the sea, and the waves are still there, and still no
sign of land, except that deep within the ocean bed. How then
can the soul not kiss and embrace, as the sea does, so very many
different shores? Was it, that the waters that embraced one's
birth, now embrace and drift one towards shores of their choice,
of their love, and so of my love?" [2]

In this phase Basil Alkazzi created a rich series of almost 
abstract parables where figures become formalised in
interconnecting shapes of head, torso and legs clothed in
triangular patches of green and blue. Overall the design is 
geometric with here and there the rhythms broken by arbitrary 
passages emphasising rather than detracting from the total unity.
In others the figures may be reduced to nine or three in varied
heights setting out on a path of parallels, crossing fields 
towards a horizon hung with moons like magic lanterns beneath a
canopy blown upwards towards the sky.

From the late Seventies those hieratic constructions seemingly
designed like abstract forms, seem to revert to more temporal
settings. Architectural forms with their empty windows and open
doors assume a new significance imbued with mystery and
metaphysical intent.

"Houses are built upon the shadows of other houses, where their
previous forms co-exist with the present form. A past life co-
exists with the present life, just as childhood co-exists with
adulthood. A moment past still lives in memory within a moment
now." [3]

By the early 1980s after an interlude engaged with the theme of 
lovers at much closer range as symbolic, earthbound and
sculptural masses, he resumed his search for material resolution
of inner subliminal compulsion. As he wrote:
"There are times, certain moments, when I have the feeling that
that certain time, certain moment, is the result of a promise
given, long, long ago. There is always that feeling of great 
inevitability in it. And if there is such a thing as a pre-
ordained pattern, pre-ordained promises, and there are many, many
times when I am not so sure there isn't, then these certain
times, certain moments, I accept these long, long ago given
promises with wonder. ......A moment comes and then there is
another, a dream comes and then there is another, a love comes
and then there is another; but that moment, that dream, that
love, having laid root, lives on in fossil, in essence, in
feeling, in spirit, in memory." [4]

This sensation is to be experienced in certain pictures, alive 
with suspended drama, where the prospect opens on the empty earth
plane and where on the edges shadowy figures of humans and birds
hold still. In some of these paintings the white buildings have
the character of shrines; open doors frame vistas of landscapes
almost surreal in their contrast of interior and exterior space.

Odilon Redon, French symbolist artist wrote: "Everything in art
occurs by allowing the unconscious to emerge". Undoubtedly it is
this inherited universal memory of mankind that responds to
atavistic allusions in Basil Alkazzi's pictures rather than
tracing predecessors in movements or performances in recent art
history. His paintings represent the materialisation of poems in
visual terms unwritten yet redolent of many remembered. Time and
growth are instrumental in motivating his imagery.

"Nothing lives forever on a plane, and nothing dies, there is
only a passing on, from one form to another, one sphere to
another." [5]

In his recent paintings from 1982 Basil Alkazzi reverts in subtly
distinguished variations of the theme of lovers' meetings,
partings, memories and hopes painted in diagrammatic silhouettes
of ethereal figures, insubstantial personae of the drama taking
place in and outside an isolated house-form, its white mass
outlined against the deep ultramarine of the night sky.

An evocation of love as distinct from the erotic is followed by
Basil Alkazzi in his personal style imaginatively fraught with
the suspense of all intimate human relationships. Yet beyond its
common interpretation "lovers" connotes a broader relationship
with the world itself. For the artist,, all beings are lovers,
lovers of God, of life itself in its myriad aspects, loving the
Earth's continuous regeneration, loving even conflicting forces,
enduring adversity and destruction with love. This subtly
apparent spiritual atmosphere endows a unique character to Basil
Alkazzi's paintings. Impossible to categorise in current   
painting idioms, his work typifies a very special approach
expressed in a synthesis of graphic hatching on colour grounds of
mood, carrying a surreal romantic aura as contemporary in feeling
with cinematic visual imagery as with the printed word.
Throughout we read the secret almost esoteric language of
symbols, for shelter, a dwelling, a palace or a shrine to worship
in, a haven secure in the blue immensity of space where alone or
together stand shades of persons cloaked in vague anonymity who
are perhaps known or departed or not yet met. In the artists
diary his own speculations on life and his interpretation of its
meaning carry his sense of its mystery and contradictions. 
In 1982 he wrote:

"As the moon rises, so it sets, and rises again; but the moment
is not the same moment, nor is the sphere. And an artist too
retreads the same path again and again, and sometimes yet
again............One does not know if it is one's last. All one
knows is that one will come back to it; but between now and then,
there will be moonlit nights, sunny days, an eclipse or two, and more
besides." [6]

The "more besides" the artist mentions came with the recent work
of 1987 onwards. Here the shelter and solidity of architectural
forms is gone and the lonely plane is a foreground only to the
drama energising the sky above. The shadowy lovers are still
there but more animated, their cloaks billow behind them as they
traverse the middle distance and beyond, they are no longer
merely silent witnesses, often they separate or are joined by
others. Dominant colours are indigo and ultramarine in the
background, the eternal night where comets streak in trajectories
of satellites and the moon repeats its phases in its quest to
total luminosity.

"....The moon, an image of man, has no luminosity of its own. It
receives its luminosity from the sun. Man receives his from
God, from the Universe." [7]

In the interlinked sequences each canvas projects its own aura of 
inscrutable significance. Here, dateless in its framework of
time, the future casts its shadow as imprecise as that of the
unrecorded past. Personal experiences bear no identifiable
association. Images indescribable in words are more subtly
potent for their subliminal suggestion. Mysticism has rarely
been absent from Basil Alkazzi's paintings. They have no
rational basis of creation but their necessity in the artist's
soul. For the past fourteen years or so he has become
increasingly involved in things metaphysical.

"It has been and is an exploration, discovery, and an expression
of the self, of all that it is made up of and its development
onto a higher plane....An artist reveals himself, his thoughts,
by his work, to himself and for himself, and then others,
perhaps, discover and see that self-discovery, that self-
revelation in matter." [8]

Basil Alkazzi's paintings present intriguing aspects of his
philosophy in the heart of his imagination. Lovers appear in
almost all of his paintings. In the latest group where the
atmosphere throbs with movement And Now it Comes, See How it
Comes, the Seal of Love has the ever-present couple as shadow
figures regarding the blinding illumination of a triangular
hearth, central symbol of emotion in crescendo. Allegorical and
rhapsodic in its detail, this composition with the others in the
series compares in effect with the unified spectacular climax of 
an opera or symphony.

"A perfection of Spirituality is sought by the image of the Seal;
the image of the Seal being the image of perfection of
Spirituality. Where the spirit body with all the knowledge,
love, and faith of this plane, lives in total and perfect harmony
with the universal spiritual-entity of timeless moments, with all
the knowledge, wisdom, love, and faith of that plane." [9]

As I wrote in my introduction to the catalogue of his first New
York exhibition in January 1987: Because Basil Alkazzi does not
easily slot into any of the facile categories so popular with 
modern art historians, he has not received the total respect he
is due. Paradoxically for this reason as much as for any other I 
consider him to be of major importance. He cannot be ignored
because his message is not so easily translatable into words. It
is in his ultimate power that he creates a presence in visual
terms capable of provoking both wonder and thought; he is the
author of his own phenomena and as all authentic prophets do
he establishes his own triumphant category.

GEORGE S. WHITTET
1989

EXTRACTS FROM A JOURNAL OF BASIL ALKAZZI:
1:1988 2:1976 3:1980 4:1982
5:1983 6:1982 7:1969 8:1984 9:1984